MIN CHC 1989-04-26 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

a lot of the data in the censes are difficult to access and so forth. And I think that there really is some useful research areas that the. . .your department could be involved in. To the extent that your own staff can do this or whether this has to be contracted out is a. . .you know, whether you can study the sugar industry or something may have to be contracted out to consultants or whatever. And then the argument comes out , well , why do we need this department then? Why can' t the Council just contract with somebody and save the money? But I 've. . . in the area of research, one of the criticisms I 've heard of . . . of the departments is there should be grant writing going on just 24 hours a day in that department . They should be writing federal grants , state grants , all kind of grant applications. In some way, to evaluate the productivity of that department , is how much money they bring in for various kinds of prototype design things or new projects and so on and so forth. So I think that there is a role for research in that department . I 'm not sure it ' s been clarified in any of the administrations or either ( inaudible) exactly where it should go, but it certainly should be thought about I think. Because there' s a lot of data that needs to be continually updated . I mean, we know how many telephones . . .private telephones were hooked up in the last six months on this island , so that ' s an idea. Subtle changes in growth and shorter periods ( inaudible) years and so forth. I mean your department should be on top of that and have information. But I realize you can' t do it with one or two people. BETHEA: Is the grant writing being done out of the mayor ' s office now? MAUNAKEA: Some is being done from Research & Develop- ment if it pertains especially to one of our projects . If it ' s , for example, an EDA grant , Economic Development Agency grant , that would apply to the economic enterprise zones. That would be through our department . So if we can write a grant that is related to say one of our goals and objectives , we would be doing that . If the grant concerns Housing, no. The Housing Department has become specialized to the point where they now do that. If the grant relates to transportation, the Transportation Department now is specialized enough to the point where they do that . So it ' s been. . . everything' s been refined it seems to me since the Charter was originally written. POPPE: In your estimation. . .you, well . . . in the past number of years obviously there was quite a bunch of furor over your . . .your department . In your estimation, was this somewhat of a personality problem, or is there something in 285